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Crowdsourcing an Opinion on the Tom Wilson Hit

By Peter Hassett

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December 18, 2013 12:41 am

tom by ian

Everyone’s got an opinion about Tom Wilson‘s hit on Brayden Schenn. While some might quote that old aphorism about how everyone has an opinion and a certain private part, I think it’s good to understand the variety of perspectives out there. By hearing each other out, we can learn and synthesize and think critically and become more tolerant of people with whom we don’t agree.

And then, maybe, we can all stop sending mean tweets to @russianmachine.

Let’s start with Justin Bourne, who has actually played pro hockey, so listen up.

The charge is important. The mechanics of the hit (shoulder-to-shoulder, victim in vulnerable position) matter, but maybe not so much as the distance traveled by Wilson before making it– and the speed with which he did it.

Good context from the Gormster. The Caps’ third D-pairing was getting beat down in their own zone for 1:45 before the hit. Wilson jumped on the ice just five seconds before hitting Schenn. That’s just long enough to get some speed and maim someone.

https://twitter.com/ThomasDrance/status/413138927017422848

Here’s another important piece if you’re willing to entertain it. Wilson is a rookie playing NHL hockey, but just barely. He rarely gets more than seven minutes of ice and has contributed very little to the team in the last month. The team announced Wilson will not participate in the World Juniors tournament, and they don’t seem to be willing to re-assign him to Plymouth (though they certainly could). He’s just not playing a lot of hockey, and he may not like it. Does his standing on the team matter to us as we suss out our feelings on the hit?

In addition to different team allegiances, we also have a strong stylistic disagreement with Broad Street Hockey. The substance, however…

Unhelpful. Unless you’re trying to inflame, it’s a lot better to characterize a person’s actions rather than the person himself. What They Did > Who They Are. That goes for the “killshot” word choice as well. Unless you’re Skip Bayless.

Exactly. While it’s relevant and important that Schenn put himself in a vulnerable position, the distance and speed of Wilson’s charge is more damning than what happened upon impact. Wilson’s entire shift was a straight line skating full speed into Schenn.

Here’s the other perspective. I don’t know if Schenn saw Wilson (NBC says no, everyone commenting and tweeting mean things at us say yes), but he definitely turned, and his turn definitely contributed to the injury. Whether or not that turning absolves Wilson of responsibility is a question for Mr. Shanahan.

Okay, that’s creepy. Hope they played MegaMillions.

We said the same thing after the Lightning game: “If there’s a code, it’s best enforced on the scoreboard.”

And here’s the broader problem. Despite their best efforts to be transparent, the NHL and the Department of Player Safety are still mysterious. The events that the audience finds so egregious (i.e. Emery mugging Holtby, James Neal kneeing Marchand in the head) often get little punishment– or none. The league hasn’t calibrated its rulebook to the sensibilities of its viewers. There will continue to be mismatches and outrage until that changes. (Okay, there will be outrage even after that changes.)

Back to Bourne, who has actual insight into the interpersonal considerations of players on the ice. Could Wilson still have executed this same hit without putting his opponent in danger? Is there a safe way to do this?

Harrison certainly thinks so. I don’t know enough to say. This will be a big part of DOPS’s thought process as they decide how to dole out punishment.

This, sadly, did not happen. We did give an honorary third star of the game to Philipp Grubauer though. Homer actually raises a really clever point. The whole Emery-Holtby fight assault and battery didn’t merit punishment according to the league. If Wilson gets suspended, while he may deserve it, it will underline the arbitrary nature of the discipline system. Both what Emery did and what Wilson did were bad– probably to a similar extent– yet only one matters enough to punish. That stinks.

To me, the important takeaway from all this noise is that there’s no simple answer. We can wave our hands and declare “this was a clean hit” in stark, black-and-white terms, but that’s facile. We can say Wilson’s a dirty idiot and doesn’t belong in the NHL, but that’s the other side of the same dumb coin. The only viable path is down the middle– understanding and weighing and adopting the thoughts of others on their merit. Hockey, like the real world, is a complicated place that resists simple answers. The more we talk, and the more we listen, the more we’ll appreciate both.

Now please stop saying mean things to us on Twitter.